Living Room Disco

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Six summers ago, I found myself precariously arranging some cinder blocks on my patio and climbing them. The repetition, a meditative state. At the time, the more off-the-wall the activity, hobby, or endeavor, the more welcome. Nothing was normal. Everyone was losing it. Other than campus facilities access during college and graduate school, I’d never had a gym membership, though I’d attended a few one-off yoga classes in Ithaca, because it’s kind of like the wellness toll here. You have to try at least four or five to find the right flow. I either didn’t, or I didn’t want to pay for something I could just as well do at home. I hold as few memberships as possible to keep the overhead of my existence low. A writing accountability membership, a CSA share with a local farm, a Criterion streaming login. What else could I want or need? Stuck at home, however, feeling my social circles and world shrink, I craved movement and fun. So I bought a fitness step.

This wasn’t my first time on a step. During undergraduate school, I attended a single-credit step aerobics course. More for fun than anything else. I liked the 80s fitness aesthetic, imagined a neon soundtrack spinning around me. The course served me well because if you can learn and remember the basics, all you have to do is toss on some tunes and have fun. No need for a video or guided group. It’s all you.

Which feels nice when so much seems strategized or gameified. Get in our steps. Share our pacing on social fitness apps. Not my place to say any of it isn’t worthwhile, especially when our lives can feel so scattered and connection is at a premium. When I drag the step out of my closet though, it’s the counterbalance to multiple task lists and a packed schedule. I don’t know when or where or how I learned this idea that “being a whole human” meant pushing pleasure to the periphery, crowding out fun in the interest of endlessly worrying. When I prop the step up on the risers and get going, a small stretch of time opens in which I get out of my own way, out of my head, moving in the interest of fun more than anything else.

Of course, there’s music. When I began doing step aerobics, I stuck to a playlist, but now the movements and the soundtrack are whatever I want. The free-for-all finds me all over the place in time, tone, and style. New Order’s “Blue Monday” is a favorite to start the session, announcing an 80s atmosphere and establishing a solid rhythm. You could play this one on a loop for the duration of your session and emerge sadly euphoric and sweaty. You could get the lyrics wrong and sing, “But if it wasn’t for your misfortune, I’d be a heavenly creature today” because sometimes I’d rather be a creature than a person. Though, true as well that I’ve been driving around blasting “The Lover” by IDLES and when it comes on, delivering an enormously joyful anthem to love and community, I sing along. (Feel free here to sing along with your hands in fists. Feel free here to windmill your arms like you just crawled out your window to go see The Movielife and you are so getting grounded when you arrive home.) I get breathless. I get dancey, find a flow that moves between the step and the floor, some place between creative expression and exorcism, and for this I love Spoon’s “Shotgun.” My movements become less structured, less rigid or planned; they just happen, soft echoes opening into others instead of ending. A loop with an upcoming end I can’t see. Then I’m spun back to the step, paying homage to the 1985 classic Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in Q-Feel’s “Dancing In Heaven,” which is from the film’s soundtrack. The song plays at the film’s climax, a televised dance-off pitting performers against each other for the chance to win a regular spot on Dance TV. Pairs of dancers take the stage to share their choreography. But I’m alone in this room. I almost slip off the step. I slip into the 90s, staying in dance mode but getting a little Western with Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” Time spins forward. This summer. Roads twisting toward small towns, strawberries patches, ice cream shops, sweat, lilac, tuberose, oud, wooded paths that offer canopy from the sun, the garden sweating me into evening. A pure bubblegum balloon fills my mind when Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead” comes on. The dog gets into it. The cats are confused. And they’re all looking like angels on the walls of Versailles… though none of us is wearing a babydoll dress. I’m another woman in bike shorts and a sports bra, moving toward numerous hazy horizons and believing that for however-long I move in one place this is the only thing I need to be doing in this moment. Nearing the end of the exorcism, I like to “open up the pit” as the kids say. Today this takes the shape of gently thrashing, bopping around to Gang of Four’s “Natural’s Not In It.” More windmill arms. Some jumping jacks. “The body is good business…” My dog smiles and stands on her hind legs, our little living room disco cha-cha.

Cooldown is a dreamy return. Yoga mat on the floor, one cat trilling as she runs over and lies down beside me. Chelsea Hodson’s “Forever,” one of my summer anthems, like a long drive outside town, fields stretched as far as the eye can see, the lake in the distance. How many times I’ve seen myself pulling over and running into the grass with this song burning in my ears. I’ve lost count. And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve climbed in my car and gone for a drive to give myself room, to feel something open beyond me, up ahead, as if I’ve replaced rumination with expansion, if I open and open, I’ll crack my future open like a gorgeous geode. Still, some days I think I might just like to remain perpetually in Balasana with my eyes closed to College’s “A Real Hero.” I might like to let the sun swallow me. Then, Chromatics “Girls Just Wanna Have Some” comes on, often the last in the rotation. The song braids in a dreamwave feel. Sometimes, often, in Savasana tears surprise me, though I suppose by now they shouldn’t; other times, I stare at the ceiling, or my dog trots over and licks the sweat from my forehead. One small ritual of many. Blocks I stack together. Or puzzle pieces I arrange, only to rearrange them the next day, the next week. It’s the life equivalent of removing a comma from a sentence and putting it back several months and several drafts later.

Breakfast in bed at least once a weekend is another joy I picked back up after losing it for a stretch. Usually while reading. Occasionally there’s life admin or press stuff, but I’m trying to give myself weekends off.

My strawberry jag continues. The week’s winning recipe was an angel food cake + jammy strawberry rose water compote + homemade whip + sliced fresh strawberries. This was delicious with a playful Prosecco one night and another, paired with vodka lemonade. The runner-up recipe was French toast, fresh strawberries, leftover jammy rose water creation, homemade whip, and syrup and butter, and a sprinkle of Maldon, which I believe is a must for French toast, whether sweet or savory.

I went back for another pail of strawberries. The first I went, I picked somewhere in the middle rows. This time, I was in the last four or five rows, the berries pushing further into the field. I sat as I picked, paused to sample the fruit, take in the trees and stillness, drink in the sky and clouds.

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